Beards

I’ve got a beard. A lot of people do. But it has always been a badge of a kind of alternative living. “Shaving,” a beard suggests, “is for people with who want to slip more easily into the torpedo tube of modern life.”

I don’t know if you’ve ever tried to push a bearded man into the torpedo tube of modern life. I have and I can tell you it’s not easy. They slip in ok up to the neck but as soon as you get to the bristle it’s no go. They jut up the chin and then it’s a bit like trying to fit a brillo pad into a Smartie tube.

Granted you often see submariners in moody continental TV docu dramas with a growth the size of  a koala but they’re often the Commodores. They have a big old shrubbery face but all the ratings have smooth little adolescent chins.

And these are the poor fools who will be slipped into the torpedo tube of modern life and fired out into the cold Arctic waters.

Gillette may be the best a man can get. But he should expect to be fired from a torpedo tube on a transcontinental ballistic mission into the fury of global existence.